The silence from the radio receiver felt heavier than forty feet of ocean water.
Julian Vance lowered the Icom transceiver from his lips, his fingers tightening against the cold molded plastic of the casing.
The green mercury-vapor lamps hummed overhead at fifty-eight hertz. Down the corridor, the rhythmic, metallic clatter of the Troy commercial steam mangle continued without pause--SHSHSH-CLACK, SHSHSH-CLACK--as the four laminated orderlies fed the Mobius bedsheet through the rollers for the fourteenth time.
“Three Syndicate gunboats,” Mac Cole said quietly, his gravelly voice dropping an octave. “Armed with heavy diesel outboards and harbor ram-plates.”
“If they’re running without running lights in a Category-Three blow, Vance Sterling isn’t looking to board them. He’s looking to run them down.”
Julian stared at the dead radio.
In retail, when an emergency line goes dead on the night shift, standard procedure is simple. You stay behind the counter, log the incident on the register roll, and wait for the morning supervisor.
You don’t leave the floor. You don’t abandon the cash drawer.
